Cheyenne Frontier Days

In 1897 Frederick Angier, a Union Pacific passenger agent, was going from town to town along the Front Range talking local boosters into one-day festivals that would fill excursion trains out of Denver; Greeley, for one, had its Potato Day. Cheyenne's businessmen could not think of a crop worth a festival, so with the editor of the Cheyenne Sun-Leader they settled on the town's frontier past, in a planning meeting at the Tivoli saloon. Who deserves credit for the idea has been argued ever since. The first Frontier Day, on September 23, 1897, lasted about six hours. Special trains from Denver brought some four thousand visitors, the crowd filled the grandstand at the old fairgrounds at Pioneer Park, and a cowboy named Bill Jones won the bronc riding.

The next year it ran two days and added Buffalo Bill's Wild West, and the Union Pacific began putting up a world championship saddle for the bucking contest. In 1908 the show moved to its present grounds at Frontier Park, and by 1919 it was being called the Daddy of 'em All.

It is held every year in the last full week of July, with the rodeo and four grand parades through downtown, and the Old West Museum at Frontier Park keeps its history.